It’s been a long time coming but now, it’s here!
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the ArduFox V1!
The easy way to de-solder Arduino shield headers
Take one pair of helping hands and a small blow torch…
Simple APRS Transmitter
I started to work on a simple APRS transmitter today so that I could use it as a antenna test bed for Project Swift.
It was very simple to build using only an Arduino Uno, a Venus GPS receiver a Radiometrix HX1 module (on 144.800Mhz) and an SMA PCB socket.
The completed board looks like this…
After playing around all day with the APRS message format, I managed to get it working and updating to aprs.fi via my own igate.
Next up will be a test with it installed in the car.
Basic pan & tilt platform
The pan and tilt platform will hold the high gain yagi used for receiving the HAB signal.
I’ve just got a small, simple platform for now to test with and will upgrade it once everything is working well. It’s driven with 2 hobby servos direct from the Arduino. One minor drawback is that a standard hobby servo only has a round 90 degrees of movement. That is fine for the tilt control but no good for the pan control so I will have to try and source a servo capable of 360 degree rotation that provides position feedback or maybe build a 4:1 drive system for a standard servo.
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Sparkfun ProtoShield
Just a quick post about the Sparkfun ProtoShield v2 board that I have to help make building HABAT easier.
The board comes in kit form and needs a small amount of soldering to get it ready for use. It’s an easy job with 3 small resisters, 2 small capacitors, 2 LED’s, 2 switches and 4 Arduino header pins.
Here is the completed board:
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Parts for HABAT
Since the test payload is now finished, I have started on the actual HABAT unit.
Here are some parts I have to get me going…
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HABAT test payload
The HABAT test payload is complete.
I now have a working unit that simulates a HAB tracker so I can start work on building the actual antenna tracker.
Here is an audio clip of the payload in action..
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New toys!
I love it when the postman comes with packets for me.
The goodies delivered today are:
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Basic tracking transmitter
I have started on the tracking transmitter that I will use to send dummy date to the HABAT via dl-fldigi. I have ordered a few GPS boards to use in the project and since I already have a Radiometrix NTX2, I have started work on the transmitter.
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Arduino at the ready
I will be using a Arduino the base building block of project HABAT.
The fact that is is mall, inexpensive and easy to work with are the main reasons that I chose the Arduino. There is also a large community of users who I hope to be able to turn to when I need help!
This Arduino will form the base of the tracking transmitter that I will be building to test HABAT.
High altitude balloon antenna tracker
High altitude ballooning is an interesting hobby where you can launch a balloon into near space (100,000 feet) with a payload attached. The payload could consist of an RF tracking device so that you can follow the balloon, a digital camera to take images or an array of sensors like temperature, pressure and radiation.
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